


What Goes Between

by Miri1984



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-04 11:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5332472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of shorts set between the end of Shadow of Revan and the beginning of Knights of the Fallen Empire. Deals with the other storylines (not the outlander) and their love interests and what happens while Vopenir is in Carbonite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Captain Quinn cut a rather dashing figure in his uniform blacks, but Sa-oirse had never been particularly vulnerable to the charms of handsome men in uniform -- they held too many associations for her to ever fully see them as anything other than an enemy.

Ironic, then, that she had spent much of the past few years effectively in command of large numbers of them, not that her fleet and Moff Pyron ever suspected that she was anything other than solicitous and caring. They were good men, in their own way, and she was glad they were safe and out of the fighting, despite the Council’s shrill insistence that they must join the fray and deliver the Empire from Arcann and his skytroopers.

Pyron knew as well as she did that pitting their fleet against Arcann’s would be suicide -- swift and decisive. No, best to keep them safe and secure. Eventually there would be a time when her ships would be useful, to carve out territory that they would defend against the onslaught of the Eternal fleet, or to be a part of a larger plan to defeat him once and for all. She had patience. She could wait.

She was aware that the Captain had been attempting to gain a private audience with her for months, pulling on connections that were tenuous at best. It was Pyron in the end, who asked that she see him personally  _If only to get the damned persistent ass off my holofeed, my Lord._

Sa-oirse admitted that she was mildly curious about him. He had managed to survive betraying the Emperor’s Wrath with no ill effects other than a failed marriage, which suggested either that he had resources that could be useful to her, or that Darth Vopenir was even more unhinged than Sa-oirse had suspected in their few interactions prior to the loss of the Terminus.

Besides, she had little to occupy her time these days, aside from the interminable waiting.

“What precisely do you think I can do for you, Captain?” she asked, setting aside the latest report from Talos on Yavin 4. Truth be told she would far rather be there with him, not stuck in Dromund Kaas, but the Council were in disarray and Andronikos had become increasingly protective of her in the past weeks.

_“It’s a kriffing jungle, Sith. No hospitals there. I’m not risking you…”_

_“Talos is a perfectly competent medic, Nikos. Women give birth all the time under worse conditions.”_

_“Drelik would mistake the kid for a damned sith artifact and you know it. Stay in the city where there are doctors who know the difference between a baby and a rune tablet.”_

As if knowing the direction of Sa-oirse’s thoughts (which was entirely possible given their force connection) the baby chose that moment to lodge her foot up underneath Sa-oirse’s rib, pushing outwards with enough force that she let out a short whuff of air and shifted in her seat, trying to give her more room.

Quinn resolutely looked away and pretended he hadn’t noticed, but Sa-oirse was well aware that he had glanced down at the massive swell of her stomach for a second before doing so.

Pregnancy, Sa-oirse thought grimly, was a ridiculous and outdated process that should be done away with.

“Dark Lord, the military is being particularly close-mouthed about the fate of the Terminus and its passengers,” Quinn said, “and Sith Intelligence, as you know, has all but disintegrated. Minister Beniko has refused to answer my calls, or is out of touch entirely. My former crew has disbanded.” He took a deep breath. “I know that you were present in the briefing with Darth Marr and my Lord… Lord Vopenir, before the Terminus launched its mission, I _need_ to know…”

Sa-oirse tilted her head. “Have a care, Captain,” she said. Quinn stumbled to a stop, looking down.

“My apologies, Dark Lord,” he said. “I meant no offense. But I am at my wit’s end in this matter. I humbly ask for your assistance and offer whatever services I can to...”

She waved a hand. “I have no need of your services, Captain,” she said. “Dispense with the grovelling.”

“My a…”

“Your apologies, yes. I believe I already have those.” She leaned her chin on her fist, studying him. “You are bold to approach me directly,” she said. “Given your history with Darth Vopenir, you are a difficult man to trust.”

“I was sworn to serve Darth Baras, Dark Lord,” Quinn said. “Had he triumphed over Darth Vopenir there would have been no talk of... of betrayal.”

“Save, perhaps, of your marriage vows,” Sa-oirse said drily.

“We of the service exist at the whims of the Sith,” Quinn said. Her keen eyes noted that his fist clenched at that and she pursed her lips. Interesting. “In return, you make our Empire glorious.”

She didn’t bother to hide her snort. “Glorious is hardly the word I would use at present, Captain,” she said. “In any case I have been absent from the council nearly a month, and my influence is waning. I feel Darth Marr’s passing far more keenly than the absence of your precious Wrath.” She picked up her datapad, waving a hand. “I do not believe I can give you any information about the whereabouts of Darth Vopenir that you do not already possess.”

Quinn’s jaw clenched. “You knew her,” he said. “You felt her presence in the force.”

Sa-oirse leaned back in her chair resting her hands over the curve of her belly and stopping herself from letting out an exasperated sigh.

“We exchanged words on two separate occasions, and I spent a charming morning watching her kill that insufferable monster Darth Baras,  _your_  former master. I believe we took similar amounts of pleasure from his passing, and that was the extent of our relationship.”

Quinn’s lips were white around the edges with strain and he swallowed. His emotions were in turmoil, yet he showed so little outward sign... Darth Vopenir had interesting tastes in companions. “Can you not…feel her?” Quinn asked.

She could take pity on him, she supposed, and reach out through the force. She was almost certain Vopenir was alive -- Darth Marr’s death had been felt by all who knew him, and Darth Vopenir’s presence in the force was at least as formidable as his. Yet nearly everything about Quinn rubbed her the wrong way, from his beautifully starched uniform to his unquestioning loyalty to a failing empire.

She had been happy to use that empire to her own ends when it had the strength to support her, now, however, it was only her pregnancy that had kept them from fleeing.

She opened her mouth to at least tell the man Vopenir was alive, and to get out of her house and go and bother someone else about it, but Andronikos chose that moment to enter.

Her husband took delight in ignoring the fashions of Dromund Kaas, wearing a sleeveless vest and wrist cuffs with simple leggings, rather than the more ostentatious garments that were paraded in the streets these days. At present seemed to be for spikes everywhere, but Andronikos had laughed at them. “Don’t want to lose a fight with my own damned shirt before I even draw a blaster,” he’d said. 

While she was not averse to putting on a show with her apparel -- intimidation was part of the general order with Sith -- Andronikos did not, in truth, need to. He nearly matched her in height, his tattoos accentuating his physique and complimenting his obvious strength. Usually he made an excellent counterpoint to her own force power, but at the moment, only days away from her due date, she cut a much less threatening figure.

Perhaps that was why Quinn had, until now, been less than hesitant about his demands. His eyes slid to Andronikos, however, as he entered, and Sa-oirse could not help but smile as her husband leaned against the door frame, casually raking his eyes over the Captain with one eyebrow raised.

“He bothering you?” Nikos asked.

“Not at all, my love,” she said, getting to her feet with a little difficulty. “I believe he was just leaving.”

“My lord…” she could hear the desperation in Quinn’s voice, and wondered at Darth Vopenir for extracting such loyalty from a man who was not even her husband any longer, but she was bored, and tired, and her feet hurt, and she could not be bothered with the former Wrath and her endless disasters, not today.

Andronikos lifted his chin, one hand moving to his blaster. “You heard the lady,” he said. “Scram.”

Quinn looked about to argue again, but bowed low to Sa-oirse when Andronikos took a step towards him. Nikos moved out of the way for Quinn to go past him through the door, but not very far, so the other man was close enough to feel his breath as he left.

“Slimeball,” Nikos muttered once he was out of the room, although probably not before he was out of earshot.

“Mindless devotion to the empire brings that out in most people, my love,” she said, pressing her hands into the small of her back and trying to ease the ache in her bones.

“Stubborn little lordling still not coming out then?” he said, coming up behind her and replacing her hands with his. She shut her eyes and let the magic of his hands work into her muscles, almost groaning with the relief it brought.

“She’s firmly ensconced,” Sa-oirse said, as Nikos rested his chin lightly on her shoulder. “I do believe she wishes to see the Eternal Empire crushed before she graces us with our presence.”

“We should have gone already,” Nikos said, frowning.

Sa-oirse shut her eyes. “You hate Yavin 4,” she said. “And the doctors agree I should not travel so far before our lordling is born.”

“Should’ve listened to you,” he said. That was a big admission, from him, and she loved him the more for it.

She reached up and cupped his cheek. “Of course you should have,” she said. “But I shall have this baby, and we shall meet the others on Yavin 4. And then, and when our lordling is old enough, we shall return and crush Arcann beneath our feet, and take whatever is left of his pathetic empire for ourselves.”

“Sounds almost possible when you say it that way.”

“I am merely stating facts, my love,” she said. He kissed the back of her neck, and the baby chose that moment to kick. her firmly in the ribs again.

Sa-oirse chose to take that as agreement.


	2. Chapter 2

Fighting droids was the worst. Years of experience with it didn’t make it any better at all, it didn’t matter how many protocols you memorised or how many tactics you studied -- droids were, bottom line, hard kriffing work to kill. Shoot off an arm and they came at you with the other. Shoot of a leg and they became stationary turrets. Nothing short of a critical shot to their main processor would stop them and they didn’t even have the decency to keep that in the same place.

The skytroopers were worse. Not just because they looked more human -- in the first wave of attacks had been mistaken for humanoids and a few had been taken captive for interrogation and the resulting explosions when they self-detonated had taken out hundreds of civilians -- no, not just because they looked more human, but because they were even more relentless than most droids, and they were utterly silent.

Brill would rather be fighting the twins.

“Jorgan, on your six!” a skytrooper dropped from a rooftop behind him nearly making her heart stop. Aric’s hearing was good enough that he heard her even without comms -- they’d been blacked out for the last twenty minutes, and Yuun had been shot trying to bring them back up again. He spun, planting the barrel of his canon in the skytrooper’s chest and using its own momentum against it to fling it back across the street. Brill followed up with a concussion charge and a sustained flurry of blaster bolts, and the skytrooper disintegrated into a satisfying pile of junk metal.

The street was lined on either side with boarded up buildings, some of which had contained snipers until an aerial bombardment had reduced the greater number of them to rubble. Aric and Brill were in the middle of a clear area, bait for the remaining skytroopers, a last stand against the invading force that was occupying this sector of Balmorra.

The smoke from the disintegrated skytrooper cleared and Brill sighed as she made out the shapes of more -- many many more, at the end of the street. A quick glance behind her revealed a similar scene from the other direction. They were pinned, nowhere to run, and no air support to take off the heat, even if they could call for help, which they couldn’t, because comms were down.

Aric moved up against her so they were facing down opposite ends of the street, backs touching. It was a familiar position that they’d taken too many times in the past few years -- fights that were unwinnable, fights that should never have happened, fights that had defined them. Through their helmets she could hear the harsh wheeze of his breath. They’d been fighting for close on two hours now with no break and although she knew he could keep going for much longer the situation didn’t look good.

He reached back and clasped her free hand in his. No actual contact -- not through an inch of durasteel, but she laced her fingers with his as best as she could.

“If it’s gonna be here, Brill,” he said. “Remember that I love you.”

She squeezed his hand back. Unprofessional, sure, but there was no one left to see now, not since she’d ordered Vik and Dorne to evacuate Yuun and get the hell out of the mess that this mission had become.

“You’re a pessimist, Aric Jorgan,” she said. Then she swallowed. “I love you too.”

***

They came at them from both ends of the street. There was minimal cover -- but Brill’s grenades and Aric’s sweeping fire stopped them from getting a bead on them from a distance, even if the occasional bolt slammed into durasteel it was built to withstand a fair bit of battering. Aric’s solid back behind her stopped the bolts from throwing them off balance.

A stroke of luck, when the group on Brill’s side were half way towards them -- one of Vik’s emplacements that they’d thought had misfired went up, taking three or four skytroopers with it. When the smoke cleared, however, there were still six on Aric’s side, four on hers.

“We can do this,” Aric said.

She nodded, and unhooked her last flame grenade from her belt. Aric let loose a massive concussive blast, one that she knew would reduce the charge in his cannon by nearly a quarter, and she lobbed the grenade at the four remaining skytroopers heading her way.

In her ear, the comms spluttered into life.

“...incoming…” Yuun’s voice was broken by static and difficult to make out. “... position… Hold….. minutes we have…. Major get to…”

“Yuun you’re supposed to be in a kolto tank!” Brill said into comms. “What’s going on?”

“...apologies… time….. on your position…. call to this sector responded with….”

The smoke from the flame grenade was clearing, and Brill’s heart sank as she realised she’d only managed to disable two of the skytroopers. Two more were coming towards her at full tilt.

“Say again, Yuun,” she said into comm. “You’re breaking up!”

“.... ground…. no way through…. aerial bombardment….”

“Shit, they’ve got ships,” Aric shouted. “Brill we need to get to cover.”

“What cover?” Brill shouted back. “There’s….” There. There, at the side of the street, against the collapsed entrance of a shop, a wrecked speeder had made a gap between the ground and the rubble, a cave small enough not to be noticed by the troopers. It’d be a tight fit, and if there was an aerial bombardment coming truth was it’d do them very little good, but the speeder had made a big enough hole in it for them both to squeeze into and under, and maybe, just maybe they could ride out whatever was coming.

“Aric!” she yelled, pulling him towards the cover she’d spotted, dragging him a little, realising with another jolt that his left leg wasn’t working and the only thing that had been keeping him upright had been her back to his in the last five minutes.

“Coming, Major,” he grunted in pain but managed to keep up with her as they dove into the gap between the speeder and the ground.

Aric ended up underneath her in what was probably excruciating amounts of pain, she couldn’t help but be pressed against his injured leg, but he didn’t make a sound, just wrapped his arms around her middle and pulled her helmeted head down towards his. They didn’t need to speak, not now that comms were back up.

They’d said it all before any way.

The telltale whine of a starship in atmosphere cut through even the sounds of battle around them. Brill braced herself, waiting for the explosions. Before they hit, though, the comms spluttered into life again and a distinctly female, NOT skytrooper voice rang in their ears.

“Woooo hooooo!”

The street outside exploded into fire, skytroopers flung this way and that as the red and blue of republic shipboard blasters rained down, missing Aric and Brill by what felt like centimetres. The fire and noise went on for a good long while, and Brill actually thought she might have passed out for some of it. When she came to there were voices over comm -- free of interference.

“Anyone who isn’t a droid, put up your hands and say thanks,” the woman’s voice from before -- presumably the captain of the ship that had just decimated the last of the skytrooper forces.

She heard Aric read off their coordinates, and shifted a little to let him know she was conscious again. He shut off his comms and let out a breath, gathering her close.

“Don’t want to do that again in a hurry,” he said.

“Don’t want to do that again ever,” she said. 

“Captain Voresh is sending a shuttle for us -- it’ll take us back to the Balmorra command centre. Are you all right? Lost you there for a minute or two.”

She reached out a gauntleted hand, cupping his helmet. Sometimes she felt like that was his real face -- not the fur and stripes, but the blank faceplate, the red and white, the Havoc squad symbol -- when she could see him, really see him, there was always an echo of the uniform underneath. “Are you all right, you were limping pretty bad out there.”

She heard him chuckle. “I’ve had worse. We’re still alive, that’s what counts.”

She took a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah but we shouldn’t be.”

***

His Major’s anger was a quiet, fuming thing, something that not enough people knew to fear. Aric, propped up on metal crutches while the bacta cast on his ankle got to work, had a brief moment of nostalgia for General Garza. Sure, she’d been an asshole of the first quarter, but by the end of the fighting on Corellia she’d at least learned to trust the Major to do the right thing, and to listen to her when she said a plan was rotten to the core.

General Moffat, however, was an asshole AND an idiot, and Brilleln was as close as she’d ever been to an act of direct insubordination.

He’d insisted on coming with her. Once, a long time ago, she’d saved him from doing something that would have destroyed his career. On dark nights, he would lie awake looking at her sleeping face and wonder where he would have been if she hadn’t helped him there, on Hoth. Far away from her, probably, stuck in some backwater licking the boots of people who didn’t deserve it.

He wasn’t about to see his wife brought down because she did the galaxy a favour and punched a superior officer in the face, despite the fact that he desperately wanted to do the same himself.

“The mission was a complete success,” Moffat was saying. “Sector five is free of skytroopers.”

“Sectors eight through ten are still swarming with them, sir,” Aric said, before Brill could get a word in.

“Well, yes, Captain, yes, we take this one step at a time, there’s no rushing strategy I…”

“If Captain Voresh hadn’t arrived it would have been the end of Havoc squad, sir,” Brill said, her voice deceptively calm. “We owe her a debt of gratitude.”

Against the wall, said Captain was examining her fingernails. “I prefer credits,” she said. “But gratitude is nice as well.”

“Her arrival was certainly fortuitous,” General Moffat said.

“It was a damned miracle sir,” Brill said. “And the only reason we’re alive. We needed to…”

Aric growled a little, under his breath -- it was a subtle sound, one that only Brill would hear normally, but the enormous Wookiee next to the Captain gave him an interested look. Brill, thankfully, took the hint, and stopped.

“Your opinion, as always, Major, is duly noted,” the General said, a little stiffly now. “I’ll look forward to reading your full report. Dismissed.”

Brill gave off the sharpest of sharp salutes (another sign she was holding in a giant tide of anger) and spun on her heel, stalking from the room. Aric hobbled after her, reckoning the General would forgive him not giving him the same deference, not with a busted leg, and got outside the office in time to see Brill take out that anger on the wall.

The punch was solid enough to leave a mark and Aric winced in sympathy for the pain she must be feeling in her hand.

“Eaaaasy,” Captain Voresh said, having escaped with them. She was an attractive human woman in her forties, he’d guessed, with laugh lines around her bright blue eyes and a shock of nearly white hair that fell over one of them, giving her a perpetually sly look that suited what he knew of her personality. “The General may be an asshole but the wall didn’t do anything.”

Brill heaved a sigh and nodded at the Captain. “I won’t get court martialed for punching the wall,” she said. The Captain chuckled.

“True. Although given the amount of force behind that one I suspect the General wouldn’t have survived to court martial you. And I wouldn’t have ratted you out, not when the rest of us wanted to do exactly the same thing.”

“Difficult to cover up,” the wookiee said. “Not right.”

“Bowdar here would have me on the straight and narrow if he could only convince me that it made more credits,” Voresh said, shaking her head and smiling.

“We owe you more than thanks,” Aric said. “Most civilian pilots fly into a war zone like that and get shot down in the first minute. You took a big risk.”

“Calculated,” she said, putting one hand on her hip and grinning at him. “And it’s not my first warzone.”

The republic had always been open to using privateers when it suited them, but hearing stories of Nico Okarr had given him a very specific image of what a smuggler captain would look like.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “How did you even know we were in trouble?”

“A favour for a mutual friend of ours,” Captain Voresh said. “Theron Shan?”

Theron Shan. Great.

“He hasn’t gotten himself killed yet?” Aric said. “Worst spy I’ve ever worked with. Well. Second worst.”

Brill grinned at him.

“He’s not with the SIS any more,” Voresh said. “And he needed a favour. I like being owed favours.”

“If he’s not with the SIS why is he involving himself in a military operation?” Brill asked.

“Connections,” Voresh said. “Which reminds me, there are a few I’d like to make here, if you want to accompany me?”

“Sure,” Brill said. “Not like the General is going to send us out on another suicide mission today.”

“Give him a few hours,” Voresh said.

“Might be an idea to be a ways away from headquarters for a bit,” Aric said.

“Well I know a nice restaurant in Sobrek, if you want to join me for dinner?”

Brill glanced at Aric, who shrugged. It’d been longer than he’d care to remember since they’d had a proper, sit down meal together. Not that eating together was ever exactly a shared experience -- cathar diet consisted of a lot of meat and twi’leks tended to eat whatever wasn’t nailed to the floor. Still, the experience was what was important. “That’d be very nice,” Brilleln said.

“Good, I’ve already booked us a table.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you’ve been planning this for a long time?” Brill said, but she was smiling a little.

“Because I have, sweetheart,” Voresh said, giving his Major a wink that was positively lascivious.

“Great,” Aric said. “Just great.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Barsen'thor pays a visit, and Zakuul decides to make life difficult for everyone.

The Jedi told her, the day she was taken, that attachments were dangerous, that attachments could lead to the dark side, that attachments could corrupt you and change you and lead you down a path from which you could never retreat.

But she had a brother.

* * *

 

She had a brother who, when she was a little girl on the streets of Balmorra, would throw himself in front of other children who chose to see her size and her race as something to be exploited. A brother who had argued for better schools, better equipment, from parents who were too busy and too tired and too stressed to think of their younger child as anything other than another mouth to feed when there were already too many.

A brother who had tried to face down the jedi when they came for her. Who had aimed a blaster at a jedi master and called her a kidnapper, who had shed real tears as they took her away, no more than six years old and only knowing that her parents wanted this for her, even if Nohjato did not.

He didn’t call himself Nohjato any longer, and Tobanok understood that, and she kept his name to herself, just as she kept their relationship to herself. Felix knew -- of course he did, although she’d been sure to ask before telling him, but even to Felix he was Zenith, just as he was to everyone else, just as he’d been, so he’d told her, since she left.

She still remembered the first time she’d seen him, back on Balmorra after so many years. Her heart had broken to see him -- to see what became of a good man from whom everything had been stripped.

The jedi were right, to a point. Attachments did lead to the dark side.

And Zenith did not have the force to comfort him.

“The republic are making a mess of things, as usual,” his office on Balmorra was less ostentatious than Tai Cordon’s, and Toby knew he’d stripped it back of every decoration that he could. In all her dealings with politicians and officials on Coruscant she’d never come across someone as focused as her brother, never seen someone so dedicated to his cause that you could forget there was a person underneath the drive and ambition.

He frightened her.

“We’re trying to help,” she said, folding her hands in front of her.

“Half of Bin Prime has no power. Supplies are cut off, Sobrik has grounded every single transport, those droids are everywhere and what does General Moffat give us? An entire sector of Sundari is free of skytroopers! Great. Too bad there’s nothing left in it but rubble.”

“Have you spoken with Tai about it?”

Zenith snorted, his lekku twitching in disdain. “President Cordon is pleased that the republic remembers the aid of the Rift Alliance. President Cordon believes that continued cooperation between the republic and the Rift Alliance is the surest way to defeat this new threat. President Cordon is safe and sound in Parliament House with fifty armed guards surrounding him while my people are out there fighting his fights for him…”

She didn’t touch him very often. There were too many painful echoes of their childhood, but right now she reached out and put one hand on his arm, gently squeezing. “He’s doing his job, Zenith,” she said. “And you’re doing yours.”

Zenith looked down at her hand, clenching his jaw. He didn’t shake it off, the way he would have done, in those first few weeks on the ship, but she could feel the muscles under his forearm tensing, and sense the roiling emotions in him through the force. She nodded, patted him gently, then withdrew the contact.

That he was obviously relieved hurt, but it was a hurt that she needed to control. Showing it would only hurt _him._

 _Small steps_ , Felix had said. _Small steps sweetheart. He loves you, no one could help loving you, but there’s so much there to work through._

She knew Felix was biased.

“On top of everything I’ve had this woman trying to get in touch with me for days, persistent doesn’t cover it.”

“Which woman?” Toby asked.

“Some republic privateer. Probably a criminal. Your people will pardon anyone if they offer to take a laser blast for you…”

Toby did not become a member of the Jedi Council without learning patience on the way. “What is her name?”

“Ba-bora Voresh,” Zenith said. “She wants me to meet with her in Sobrik. Something about an alliance.”

“An alliance of whom?”

Zenith frowned. “People who want to get things done,” he said.

Toby took a deep breath. “She sounds like your sort of person,” she said. “Perhaps you should meet with her?”

Zenith shook his head, moving back to his desk, picking up a datapad, then cursing and tossing it aside. “Perhaps I should. It’ll get me out of here any way.”

“I can come with you…”

“The Barsen’thor of the Republic?” Zenith chuckled. “You couldn’t be more official if you were the Jedi Battlemaster. If I’m going to see her I need to go alone.”

“You know I want to help you,” she said.

He stopped, pressed his lips together, reached a hand up to adjust his tchin.

“You know I would never ask for your help,” he said.

“Which is why I always have to offer it,” she said, smiling.

“Don’t,” he said, frowning now. “Don’t make it about… what we were.”

She closed her eyes, then took a deep breath. “What we are is not in the past,” she said. “You are my brother. It is always.”

“Pfft,” he snorted. “You are intolerable. Get out of here. Find your husband and let him know exactly how useless his republic troops are.”

“I forgot to mention that Felix sends his love,” she said.

Zenith didn’t smile. But she could read his eyes, and the expression there was enough to satisfy her. For now. “Go on now,” he said.

“As you wish,” she said, giving him a respectful bow, and retreating from the room.

Felix met her outside, with their escort and their transport. She despised needing so many officials for a simple visit to her brother, but knew that it was necessary. Long gone were the days when she could slip through any city in Republic space unnoticed unless she somehow managed to travel there on something other than official business.

She looked up at Felix, who was in full dress uniform, and felt her heart melt a little. He was so very handsome, and he cared so very much. She wondered all the time what she had done to deserve him.

“All good?”

“You know Zenith,” Toby said, sighing. “He’s angry and he wants to focus his anger on someone. That someone, today is the republic.”

“I thought he always focused it on us,” Felix said, smiling a little.

“Sometimes he likes to focus on Tai Cordon,” she said.

Felix’s eyes crinkled at the sides and he looked like he was about to take her hand -- not appropriate, really, not in public, but she risked leaning up on her tiptoes to lightly kiss his cheek, earning a blush from him that was worth any reports of their impropriety reaching Grand Master Shan’s ears.

Truth be told, the order had been far less concerned about their marriage than she’d anticipated. The war had taken its toll on those who were rigid and inflexible, and Toby was, frankly, worried about the cohesion of the order. Grand Master Shan was doing her best, but there had been at least three defections of high ranking jedi in the past month, disregarding the order’s directive to stay focused on the good of the entire republic, rushing to help individual planets against Zakuul’s relentless invasion.

Toby could not blame them. She was here, on Balmorra, for similar reasons. While she had more freedom than most, she was not Barsen’thor of Balmorra. The entire republic deserved her attention, and she knew she was neglecting it.

As if the galaxy knew her thoughts, as they walked towards the hangar bay of her ship, her personal holo chimed.

“Yes?”

Reilli Rahn was a familiar face -- they had convened for strategy meetings more than once in their time on Corellia, and she was a fine warrior. Tobanok considered her a friend as well, although her humour was sometimes a little off putting, and the constant presence of her medical officer was sometimes trying.

“Barsen’thor, I’m glad I caught you before you boarded. There’s a problem.”

“One of many, I suspect,” Toby said, and Reilli smiled, although her face was tight and the smile did not reach her eyes.

“Zakuul has blockaded Coruscant,” Reilli said.

Toby drew in a breath. The news wasn’t exactly unexpected, but that Zakuul’s forces had made it past their defenses so quickly was disheartening, to say the least. “Where is Grand Master Shan?”

“She’s off planet,” Reilli said. “Chancellor Suresh and I are holding things together here but the order is in chaos. We need you to meet with the Grand Master, devise a strategy to keep Tython free of interference, protect the younglings and the padawans…”

“You can count on me,” Toby said. “Do you know where the Grand Master is?”

Rahn looked frustrated and not a little desperate. The Grand Master had always had a special relationship with the Jedi Battlemaster -- Toby knew that they considered each other family. “I can feel her through the force, but she is elusive. Tobanok, I believe she does not wish to be found, and this concerns me more than the ships in orbit.”

“Has the council given any directives?”

Again, the battlemaster looked frustrated. “None that are any use to us,” she said. “And our communications are likely to be restricted at any moment. You’re the only one of us who is free to act, aside from Satele. We need you, Tobanok.”

“I’m here for you,” Toby said. “And for the order.”

“Thank you,” Reilli said. “I’m transmitting Satele’s last known coordinates -- also Commander Malcolm’s -- he’s also off planet thank the maker. I suspect that is not a coincidence.”

“I will find them both,” Toby said. “Take care.”

She shut off the holo, to see Felix standing next to her, tension in every line of his body. “Havoc Squad is here right now,” he said. “We should coordinate with them, talk to them about this. They might even know where Commander Malcolm is, I know Major Brilleln said they were doing an op not long ago…”

“That’s a good idea, Felix,” she said.

“And you should tell Zenith,” he said, hesitating only a little. “He needs to know that Balmorra is well and truly on its own now.”

Toby reached up and cupped Felix’s face, brushing her thumb over his cheek. “You’re right, as always,” she said. He pulled her in close, pressing his lips to the top of her head in a gentle kiss.

“You okay?” he asked.

She looked inward, trying to find peace, and it was there, a kernel of it, a tight certainty. “You’re here,” she said. “We’ll fight this together.”

“Always, sweetheart,” he said, hands moving to the small of her back, pulling her close and enveloping her in his warmth. “Always.” 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zakuul gets in the way of Sa-oirse's life plan. This is probably going to end badly for them.

Sa-oirse was a lord of the Sith, a member of the Dark Council, had survived ghost possession and slavery and the wrath of the Republic.

She was undone by a person smaller than the length of her forearm.

“She will not latch, or feed, or do anything that is required of her!” she hissed. The woman who attended her, another tiny human, cyborg enhanced just as she was, ducked her head against Sa-oirse’s anger.

“I’m sorry, uh… my lord,” she said. “I’m trained in field medicine but they don’t really… uh… do babies? In that?”

Sa-oirse waved a hand, dismissing the young woman’s concerns. “Ignore me,” she said. “I do not blame you for this ridiculousness.” She glared down at the tiny face, currently scrunched up in effort (no doubt attempting to expel more waste). “It is  _her_  fault.”

Mako’s face scrunched up in that way people did when they were confronted with a baby of any species. “Awwww, don’t blame the little one, she’s just trying to learn how to… you know…  _be.”_

Sa-oirse blinked. Mako had a good point there, although she could spend a moment wishing that perhaps babies were more like droids and could learn the being part with a few keyed commands and less…

...fluids.

“You have been most attentive,” Sa-oirse said. “Please excuse my temper. The birth was not exactly easy and my husband has informed me I need to sleep more.”

“Hard to do when they’re squalling all the time?” Mako said. “I could nurse her for a little while if you…”

“It’s all right, kid,” Andronikos said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Mako ducked her head. “Sorry! Sorry, I don’t mean to…”

Andronikos chuckled. “Easy, kid. We’re not gonna eat you.” He came up next to Sa-oirse and ran a hand along her shoulders, which she leaned into. They hadn’t had time for things as simple as touching, not since fleeing Dromund Kaas, and she was angry about that, angry at everything, truly.

Hormonal mood swings, the scans said, but she was angry at those most of all. When she had five thousand legitimate things to be angry about, why assign an external, uncontrollable cause?

“Here,” Andronikos took the child from her, furnished with a bottle of pre pumped breast milk. Sa-oirse had ample supply, and a droid to help her pump when she was too tired to do the duty herself, but she still felt like a failure every time her husband took it upon himself to give her a break from the child’s constant, incessant need for food and comfort.

“Why are we not on Yavin 4?” she snapped to Mako.

“Relaaaax, Lady Dark Lordliness,” the Devaronian -- Gault? had come in just behind Andronikos and was leaning against a doorway. “You hired us to run the blockade for us, and that’s what we’ll do. Yannada just has to find the right window, to get through the fleet, It’ll all be fine.”

“I despise this ship,” Sa-oirse growled. “And I despise you.”

Gault waved a hand. “Oh well, you’re not the first,” he said. “Although I have to say, gotta love your parenting techniques, makes me rethink my attitude to my own dearly departeds, perhaps they weren’t as bad as I…”

“Hey,” Nikos managed to shove Gault against the wall of the medbay without jolting Thania enough to dislodge the bottle she was greedily sucking on. Years of dual wielding blasters had made him uniquely dextrous. One of the reasons she loved him. “Try pushing a kid out of your butthole and fleeing a world full of homicidal robots while you’re still having labor pains. Then insult my wife again.”

Gault threw up his hands. “Please, pleaaaase, I’m not insulting her, I’m not suicidal.”

“Oh really?”

“If you people are done fighting we’ve got a ship to get past a blockade,” Yannada’s voice came over comm. “Gault get up here and man the cannons. I don’t want to shoot at any of these ships but if they spot us we’re going to need to distract them before we jump to hyperspace.”

“You said that stealth tech was good,” Gault grumbled.

“Good doesn’t mean perfect, now get up here and leave the Sith alone. She’s got her own problems.”

Sa-oirse raised her eyebrow at the Devaronian, who shrugged and left to do as Yannada said. Nikos glared daggers at the man’s back, and she smiled to herself, thinking if he weren’t holding their daughter right now he might have gone for his blaster.

The thought was a little thrilling.

“Shhhh, little one,” he said to her. “We’ll be on Yavin 4 soon and you can screach all you like. No one there to hear except the Massassi and they’ll probably join in for fun.”

Yavin 4. She had equipment there, a base -- Drelik had been researching the ruins with the Imperial team for more than a year now and he was utterly devoted to her. She’d sent Khrem on ahead, to protect him, but thinking of their final destination added fuel to the fire of anger in her belly.

Thania was only a few days old. She had wanted her child to have a life entirely different from hers -- full of wealth and privilege -- in the midst of the most powerful city in the Empire.

Zakuul had decided against that, of course.

For that, she would crush them.

Mako absented herself from the med bay tactfully just after Gault withdrew and Nikos came back to her, gently rocking from side to side with Thania in his arms as she fed. She was content, for the moment, and Sa-oirse allowed herself the luxury of leaning back and sighing.

“Drelik will have everything ready for us,” Nikos said. “We can disappear on Yavin 4 for as long as it takes to gather enough forces to strike back at these bastards.”

“I am sorry we cannot retire to a planet more to your liking, Nikos,” she said.

“Nah, I may like Rishi for me but there’s no kriffin’ way I want our daughter growing up around scum like that.”

She smiled slightly. “You’d prefer her to grow up in ruins surrounded by sith spirits?”

Nikos shrugged. “Better than growing up under Acina and whatever shitstorm the Dark Council is preparing. Or those Zakuul freaks and the fuckin’ Emperor’s kids.” He leaned down, almost absently, and kissed Thania’s head. She was dark skinned, like her father, with a fine crop of black hair, and she moved her head towards him, still sucking furiously on the bottle between her lips. “Maybe you can have a life of peace, little sithspawn,” Nikos said softly. “Make a change from your rotten parents, any way.”

Sa-oirse clenched her jaw, then punched the comm, a little too enthusiastically, probably. “Are we clear of the blockade yet, Captain?”

She heard Yannada curse inventively. “Hold on to your damned lightsaber, sith lady. I’ll get us through. Just. There’s a few fucking  _warships_  in our way.”

Sa-oirse had figured something of the sort, and closed her eyes, reaching out through the force to see what she could of the battle. The main warships -- the Eternal Fleet -- were remotely controlled by droids, and therefore impervious to whatever force techniques sith could use to coordinate battle. The Council had discovered this very early on -- after the attack on Korriban had decimated the academy (and so soon after those Revanites had done the same) but some of the smaller ships were piloted by humans and humanoids, and some of those humanoids were vulnerable. If they were close enough there was a chance she could use the force to cloud their minds, combined with the stealth technology Gault and his partner had salvaged it should give them an edge and possibly create a window for Yannada to fly through and make the jump to hyperspace.

There… in that sector. Two fighters, piloted by humans -- not force sensitive -- cannon fodder, Sa-oirse guessed, in _just_  the right positions….

“What was that?” Yannada said.

“They flew straight into each other,” Gault sounded surprised.

“I’m taking the window,” Yannada said. “Blizz, Mako, get down into the engine room and find out what’s making that damned noise. Gault… you’re off gun duty.”

“Other duties?”

“You know what I want,” Yannada cut off comms, and there was a whine from the engines that meant they’d made the jump. Sa-oirse sat back again, sighing with the effort it had taken her to cloud those minds from so great a distance. Nikos was looking at her with narrow eyes.

“Thought you weren’t supposed to be doing that sort of thing,” he said. “Not so soon after the birth.”

“I can rest when we get to Yavin 4,” she said. “Until then I will do whatever it takes to keep my family safe.”

Thania had fallen asleep, and Nikos held her gently in one arm, still gently rocking back and forth on each foot. While she felt fiercely protective of Thania and would not hesitate to kill anyone or thing that threatened her, she felt none of the maternal softness that was spoken of. It was Nikos’ face that melted when he looked at their daughter, Nikos’ arms that instinctively held her in the correct way, soothed her when she was fussing.

She felt no jealousy, just a hard, desperate core of fear.

She regretted, not for the first time, that she had dismissed the force ghosts. She regretted not holding on to that power. She was worried that, in order to protect her family, she would need all the power she could grasp.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ho there, some nsfw going on in this chapter :D.

Yannada often had cause to reflect on the benefits of experience, never quite so much as she did when she having sex.

Gault Rennow had been around for more years than she could conveniently count, and had experienced a damn sight more than she had, in the bedroom as well as outside of it. She liked to take advantage of that whenever she could.

Luckily Gault was as enthusiastic about sharing his experience as she was, and his long time lover and sometime partner Hylo Visz was just as happy to oblige, whenever they happened to be in the same system. For now, however, she made do with Gault on his own. A couple of days in hyperspace with a squalling kid and a sith lord on board had given them both a few tensions that they needed to work through.

“Faster,” she hissed, trying to keep as quiet as possible -- the Profit hadn’t exactly been built with soundproofing in mind. Also there was something a odd about fucking when there was a baby on board, although Yannada didn’t stop to think too hard about that considering as far as turn offs went thinking about babies when she had a cock inside her rated pretty kriffing high.

Gault grunted, gripping her hips from behind and mouthing at her shoulder, before sinking his teeth in sharply. She let out a short, sharp cry as she came, and with a few hard thrusts, Gault did the same with a soft groan.

They both collapsed face first on her bed, although Gault rolled off her almost immediately, breathing hard.

“Getting old,” he said and Yannada sniggered, scrambling forward on the bed for a tissue without bothering to get up.

“Just clone yourself again,” she said. “Might be nice to have two of you about.”

“Need I remind you that those “clones” come out dead,” Gault said reaching down to get his shirt.

“Huh. Right. Even I’m not that kinky.”

He chuckled. “If they ever perfect the process I’ll be first in line, babe.”

“We should clone a couple of me as well, send some to Hylo so she can keep herself amused while we’re gone.”

“Uh uh,” Gault said. “She’d put them to work in the mines or something, just for kicks.”

She probably would at that. Yannada opened her mouth to make some comment about Gault being half dressed and sweaty while he worked for Hylo most of the time any way when comms chimed. “Dropping out of hyperspace,” Torian’s voice said.

“Nice timing,” Gault said.

“We’ve got an hour approach to Yavin 4 -- and we’ll have to land,” Yannada said. “I should handle that since the place is basically all jungle.”

“Gonna go and play with the kid while you wait?” Gault said. “The lungs on that thing -- are all humans so noisy? Is it proportional to their size or something?”

“Beats me,” Yannada said sitting up cross legged on the bed. “Humans are hardly my specialty.”

Gault leaned forward, roughly grabbing her arm and pulling her to a kiss. She grinned under his lips and let one hand wander downwards, but he backed away out of her reach. “One hour, huh?”

She grunted. “Yeah. I should probably shower or something. Don’t want any delays getting our passengers off the ship.” She ran her hand over her head, the rough stubble reminding her she needed to shave. “Why we can’t get straightforward bounties any more is beyond me.”

“Everyone’s scrambling to get their own lives together,” Gault said, shrugging. “Letting grudges go, saving their credits for when their life falls apart rather than trying to screw up someone else’s.”

“Bad for our business,” Yannada said.

The comm chimed and she reached out and hit it without thinking.

Yannada didn’t bother with anything but voice communication in her quarters, there really wasn’t any point when you couldn’t see a holo and they just drained power, but for Hylo she knew Gault had rigged it so he could see her and she could see… well right now she could probably see a whole lot of both of them, since Yannada hadn’t bothered with clothes yet and Gault was still without pants. “Well, there’s a nice view,” Hylo said. “Having fun are we?”

Yannada laughed. “Hyperspace is a bitch,” she said. “You know it just as well as we do.”

“True. A little hurt that you’re having fun without me, that’s all.”

“Work, work, work,” Gault said. “You can’t expect us to get through three months of separation without taking the edge off every now and then, I’m in the prime of my life and Yannada is...”

“Oh I know what Yannada is,” and Yannada could hear the leer in her voice. She flashed a grin for Hylo’s benefit, leaning back on the bed so as to give her a better view. “I’m just teasing you, sweethearts. So long as you give me full details when you get back, you can do whatever you want.”

“You’re all kindness,” Gault said.

“Of course I am. And I’ve got a job offer you might be interested in, thought you’d like to know. I’ll be waiting at Port Nowhere after you’ve dropped off your sith.”

“How did you…” Yannada started to ask, then she stopped. There really wasn’t any point in asking Hylo how she knew about their current job. She kept closer tabs on Yannada and Gault than she did on her own smuggling operations.

Insurance, she called it.

Yannada couldn’t blame her. Gault had made no secret of how much money he’d stolen from her over the years, if “running away with her share” was the same as stealing, which in Hylo’s case… well.

There’d been some interesting… debt settling when they’d first met. Some of them still made Yannada smile.

And Gault wince.

“What’s the job?”

“Can’t talk about it over comms,” Hylo said. “But there’s the potential for a lot of credits. You’ll thank me.”

Yannada tilted her head. “Thoroughly,” she said.

“That’s how I like it, honey. Fly safe.”

The comms cut off and Yannada turned to Gault, whose force signature was clouded with affection and, as always when they talked to Hylo, a tinge of guilt.

She reached up and tugged on his horn. “Hey,” she said. “You know she loves you.”

“Yeah,” Gault said. “Sometimes I wonder if that makes it worse.”

She threw his pants at him. “Come on, we’ve got a ship to land.”

Torian and Mako were at the controls, but Torian slid out of her chair when she came to the bridge. The kid was a fair pilot, but she’d been flying ships when he’d been barely walking, and despite first impressions she’d come to love this one. Blizz had made some impressive modifications over the years and while it made for better speed and stealth that wasn’t matched anywhere outside of Intelligence, she was twitchy, especially on landings. Yannada wanted to handle this herself.

“Are our guests ready for departure?” Yannada asked.

“Got the kid in some sort of sling thing,” Mako said. “She’s so cute, I just wanna squish her!”

Yannada huffed out a breath. “Sure, whatever,” she said. “Just let me know if you and Torian decide to start trying for one okay? This ship isn’t exactly kid friendly.”

Torian coughed behind her and Mako spluttered. They were way too young, those two, and she’d grown fond, but there was no way this job was any place for a baby.

The atmosphere of Yavin 4 was thick with cloud, and finding a good spot to land was difficult. Revel and Imperius had been cagey about giving her coordinates too, just telling her to put them down in a particular sector. She was fine with that, it wasn’t her ass that was going to have to transport a baby and a bunch of supplies through a wingmaw infested jungle with nothing but a droid and a two seater speeder that she was pretty sure wasn’t designed for that sort of terrain.

Revel could handle himself, she knew that much, but she wondered if fatherhood, or hanging around a dark lord of the sith, had finally touched him a little in the head.

“Got a loose stabiliser, Blizz,” she said into comms. In the engine room Blizz spouted a babble of Jawa that she lost, but the upshot of it was that the stabiliser stopped being loose a couple of seconds later, and Yannada gently set the Profit down in a clearing.

There were some snaps and cracks as the trees at the outer edges were flattened (the clearing wasn’t quite big enough) but other than that the landing was smooth.

In the cargo hold she found Darth Imperius and Revel already packed and ready to go.

“We’re all done,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Imperius was seated in the speeder with her daughter in her arms while Andronikos checked the straps holding crates of the maker knew what to a trailer at its rear. Yannada was dead sure they didn’t need all that stuff for the baby, although maybe they were planning on having ten more down here.

That’d be fun for them.

The ramp lowered with a thump, and humid air, heavy with the scent of living things floated in. Her force sense quivered -- something just out of her reac. A touch of the dark side, probably. She remembered that this was where Revan had died -- again -- and thanked whatever gods were listening that she’d never had enough force to give a shit about light and dark sides of anything.

It really wasn’t her sort of place.

“You have our appreciation,” Imperius said.

Yannada tapped her foot, and Andronikos grinned, tossing her a datapad. “Just transferred your money, too,” he said.

She caught it, running her fingers over it and keying it to give her an audio read off. She whistled. “Well, I guess there’s not much to spend credits on here, any way,” she said. They must have cleaned out a lot of their accounts to give her that much. She knew they weren’t just paying for the trip, though.

They were paying for her silence.

Revel smirked and glanced at Imperius. The big cyborg woman leaned down and started up the speeder with one hand, cradling the kid awkwardly in the other.

“You gonna be all right out there, on your own?” Yannada asked, putting one hand on her hip.

“I am Sith,” Imperius said. Revel shrugged, jumping into the speeder beside her.

“She is,” he said. “Also we won’t be completely on our own. We know where to get in touch with you, Captain.” In other words, they knew where to find her if she ever decided to betray their location.

She remembered, with another slight shiver, that Hylo had known they had passengers.

The speeder’s engine whined as it left the cargo bay and Yannada gave the order to close the ramp for take off. She sincerely hoped she’d never be seeing them again.

“Where to now boss?” Mako said. Under her feet, the deck trembled as the ship readied for departure. She made a note to get down into the engine room and check out what had given the stabilisers those problems on entry. “Port Nowhere,” she said.

“Oh great,” Mako said. There was a shudder as the Profit lifted and Yannada took a moment to enjoy the feel of the machinery around her. “Gonna give Blizz any shore leave? You know what happened last time…”  
“Blizz can look after himself,” Yannada said. Nowhere was the closest thing they had to a home port, and the lowlifes there knew from experience what happened to people who messed with her particular Jawa.

And Hylo was there, with more work. Yannada smiled to herself as she made her way back to her quarters, tossing the datapad from hand to hand as she went. She’d be sure to buy her something nice.

They owed her, after all.


End file.
